Bus Yard Fumes Blamed in Illness of 38 Students

Noxious fumes emanating from a nearby bus yard sickened 38 students at Sun Valley Middle School on Friday, sending 20 of them to area hospitals for treatment, authorities said. All 20 were all expected to be treated and released.

The fumes, which officials believe emanated from an area where school buses are steam-cleaned, were harmless, Los Angeles Fire Department Assistant Chief Michael Fulmis said. “It was just a bad, stinky odor.”

“Clearly this is not a HAZMAT incident,” said Battalion Chief Terrance Manning. Nonetheless, “We treated it as a worst-case scenario.”

Both students and staff began noticing the gasoline-like odor coming through the open doors and windows of their classrooms about 12:30 p.m., said Assistant Principal Manuel Diaz. After some students began complaining of nausea and headaches, school officials sounded the fire alarm and, using the school’s public address system, warned students that this was not a drill.

The students were routed to the basketball courts, the predetermined meeting site during fire drills. About 1:40 p.m., firefighters began treating some of the students and took the sickest to area hospitals.

The odor apparently came from the Los Angeles Unified School District’s transportation yard south of the school, Fulmis said, where workers had been cleaning a clarifier, a device used during the washing of buses to collect the oil and dirty water.

It was not clear why the clarifier caused the fumes, Diaz said, adding that odors from the yard had never reached the school before.

Alan Masumoto, a Fire Department spokesman, said firefighters tested the air for contaminants soon after arriving at the scene but found nothing, noting that a breeze may have dissipated the fumes by then.

The school district’s Environmental and Safety Unit will investigate the incident, said district spokeswoman Ellen Morgan.

Some students said the smell made them ill as they waited outside. “It was giving everybody a headache,” said Weldon Lang, a sixth-grader.

“I told my friends I was going to throw up; my stomach was freaking nasty,” said Shawn Helmuth, a seventh-grader. “It was in the air--it just started smelling.”

The students were dismissed at their regular time, about 2:50 p.m., Diaz said.